science

Each pregnancy is linked with an additional two to three months of biological ageing, researchers say

Pregnancy may speed up biological ageing in women, a study has found.

Scientists at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York looked at the reproductive histories and DNA samples from 1,735 people in a long-term, continuing health survey in the Philippines to investigate the influence pregnancy has on the ageing process.

They worked out participants’ biological age using six different “epigenetic clocks” – genetic tools that estimate biological age based on patterns of a process called DNA methylation.

The study involving 825 young women found that each individual pregnancy a woman reported was linked with an additional two to three months of biological ageing, and women who reported being pregnant more often during a six-year follow-up period showed a greater increase in biological ageing during that period.

The relationships between pregnancy and biological ageing persisted even when the authors accounted for socioeconomic status, smoking, genetic variation and the built environment in participants’ surroundings.

The authors failed to find a link between increased biological ageing and the number of pregnancies fathered by 910 same-aged men from the same health survey.

The findings are published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences.